Stretching towards the tree-lined horizon, past Saddam’s helicopter-landing-pad-cum-hood, is a glimpse into the future of road “technology” in the socialist west ; that confused and slightly orcish part of the globe that explicitly aims for budgetary malfeasance at every level and in every sense and more often than not hits a Barry Bonds home run.i

Sure, gravel roads will make more dust – particularly increasing the levels of harmful PM10 and PM2.5 – as well as increasing the risk of damage to downstream ecosystems that will take the brunt of the inevitable runoff, but once you start mortgaging your future with criminal taxes, spiteful bureaucracy, and rest of the hateful cabal of “democratic” imprisonment, there’s little to stop the momentum along the continuum from 0 to 1 to – ZIP! – infinity. Cars are going the way of the dodo anyways, so the limits that gravel roads impose on traffic volume – to say nothing of the neighbourhood-enhancing effects of their inherent speed limiting properties and their lower costs to maintain – are neutral if not really quite positive. The socialist west is poor as shit, it just doesn’t know it yet. When it finally gets a clue, the gravel road will be there, just as it always has been for the rest of Africa.

Sorry for your loose (roads).

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Never has greater wealth been more schmuckishly and shamefully wasted, but nor are China or Russia or TMSR~ or anyone else for that matter about to interrupt their enemy while they’re making such a monumental mistake. [↩]